Learn 60 New Vocabulary Words With These Imaginative Student Videos

Over the past eight years of our Vocabulary Video Contest, students have produced thousands of lively, original videos in which they define a Word of the Day in under 15 seconds.

Sixty of the winning videos, organized into three compilations by part of speech, are rounded up in this post. We hope that this repository of videos informs as much as it entertains. To that end, we created an interactive Vocabulary.com list to accompany each video. Use these lists of verbs, adjectives and nouns to practice each word’s definition and spelling.

Our 9th Annual 15-Second Vocabulary Video Contest will run from Dec. 1, 2021 to Jan. 12, 2022. In the meantime, check out our yearlong calendar of challenges for students to learn new vocabulary with The New York Times.

Verbs

Learn nine verbs via the three-minute video at the top of this post, then test your comprehension with this vocabulary list.

1. abscond by Gabe Sherman

2. amalgamate by Isabella Bonito and Riya Dosh

3. defame by Naomi Cooke, Riddhi Damani and Kendall McDonough

4. distill by Victoria Tong

5. exorcise by Emily Bone and Davis Gibb

6. feign by Emma Kim

7. levitate Miguel Cabelin and Enya Rodriguez

8. scotch by Jacob Rodriguez

9. vex by Steven Xie, Elliot Azzi, Arek Zenel Walasek and Korinne Hennel

Adjectives

Learn 19 adjectives in the six-minute video below, then test your comprehension with this vocabulary list.

Nouns

Learn 32 nouns in the ten-minute video below, then test your comprehension with this vocabulary list.